CURRIER & IVES 'EXPRESS TRAIN' AND LEGAL TENDER
Print and Currency Collectors today have difficulty in finding an original of the Currier small-folio lithograph ‘The Express Train’. It is rare, popular, and seldom offered for sale. Beyond the belief that it was produced about 1850, was perhaps put on stone and lettered by J. Schultz, and was "a scene on the New York and Erie," almost nothing is known about it. Yet millions of Currier's contemporaries saw and handled the subject, not only as produced by Currier, but also in slightly different versions on some 20 types of American bank notes between 1855 and 1865.
The first known use of the subject by a bank-note engraver occurred on a note circulated about 1855 by the Moosam
River Bank, in Maine. It was also used before 1860 as the central vignette on
the following notes: $10, Bank of Canandaigua, New York; $8, Bank of Cape Fear,
Wilmington, North Carolina; $5, Bank of Columbus.... Read
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